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The WDTV Live (it has no DRM chip for detection) & HTPCs will be the only method of circumvention in the not to distance future (I also expect receivers & TVs to incorporate the protection in 2011).” Essentially AnyDVD cannot defeat this new protection mechanism. It made its debut this week on “The Losers”.

It works backwards. Essentially if a player detects the watermark, it will mute the audio if it does NOT detect copyprotection. So, essentially the player refuses to play discs that are not copy protected. Newer players seem to be the ones that are doing the enforcing (and the PS3). It is possible older players will be “upgraded” to the new feature in future firmware releases (which might be required to play new discs).

It is interesting technology because apparently it is being used in theaters now. It will survive a camcorder recording. If a camcorder recording is burned to BD it will not play. It is also speculated it might be headed into new DVD players too.

Of course slysoft forums tried experiments. If you videotape something with a protected soundtrack playing in the background, it will trigger the copy protection! So, if you are filming your kid trying to talk or something and someone is watching a protected DVD in the other room, you will not be able to make a BD out of it.”

” WDs media players seem to enforce this new protection too. They enforce it on ripped tracks (or for example if you tried to play that video tape made with the background soundtrack).”

The player is responsible for decoding the audio in addition to bitstreaming it. It decodes it so that Cinavia can be detected. This makes it unlikely that older players will be updateable with firmware updates to detect Cinavia. Nonetheless, the basic premise of Cinavia detection is to read the audio stream, decode it and check for Cinavia, and if none, pass it through to the receiver (bitstreamed). If Cinavia is detected, after 20 minutes, the audio stream is no longer passed to the receiver and the video gets a Cinavia error message overlayed on top of it.

“Movies protected by Cinavia technology carry inaudible codes embedded by the copyright owner in their audio tracks that indicate where and how they are allowed to be used. For example, movies that are being released to theaters can carry a Cinavia code that indicates that they are supposed to be duplicated by professional replicators and played back on professional projection equipment only,” reads the official site.

At present, the Cinavia technology has only been introduced into Blu-ray players (which also includes PS3s; and apparently even the PS3 Media Server has a problem playing these DRM-protected files). A list of participating Blu-Ray manufacturers where Cinavia has been integrated can be found at this link. However, since the technology has now been officially stamped into AACS’s new agreements, all major manufacturers will be assumed to comply to the new protocol.

“Cinavia has been adopted as a required component of the AACS content protection system. Blu-ray players with Cinavia detectors began entering the consumer market in late 2009.”

As it stands, the Cinavia will have a negligible impact on piracy as a whole.